Imagine if the whiteboard in your next corporate meeting could take notes when you talked and add comments from your teammates in the meeting.

The wait could be over soon. IBM and Ricoh Europe have announced an interactive whiteboard with artificial intelligence (AI) that puts cognitive computing right in the middle of a meeting room.

The IBM Watson-powered whiteboard looks like any other run-of-the-mill meeting room whiteboard. Anyone in the meeting room or remotely joining by conference call can control what's on the whiteboard with voice commands. If the team is in a break-out session in the same room, the whiteboard can capture side-bar conversations and put them up too. When it comes to language, think of the whiteboard as a physical interpretation of what happens on Bablefish. The whiteboard can translate the words from other languages and display them back on the whiteboard.

"AI will have a huge impact on businesses in the coming decade. Intelligently adding to discussions and suggesting relevant information represents real value in a business setting," said David Mills, CEO, Ricoh Europe. "Personal assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri often grab headlines but the impact of embedding cognitive technology within business devices is most newsworthy."

To be sure it works in the real world, IBM has installed more than 80 Ricoh interactive whiteboards in its global Watson IoT headquarters in Munich, Germany. The company also invested $200 million USD, out of its $3 billion investment in Watson, to the global Watson IoT headquarters in Munich.

"AI-guided analysis leads to more informed decision-making, that’s where the impact of AI will be most profoundly felt," added Mills.